"Hurao was one of the first chiefs to unify the Chamorro to fight against the Spanish," says Baltazar Aguon, "cutting across the social caste system to do so." Baltazar wrote the screenplay for the anticipated short film, Matto Saina-Ta As Hurao, shot in Guam during July and August this year.

Aguon, a screenwriter and producer, received his MFA from the American Film Institute's (AFI) Center for Advanced Film and Television Studies. He most recently was an associate producer on the documentary For the Record: Guam in World War II, scheduled for release in 2007, and wrote and co-produced HIV Prevention Public Service Announcements for the Guam Health Department's Prutehi Hao program.

"The story of Hurao is personally significant," says Aguon. "For me, it is a connection to a time when, as a people, we could have done something about our culture -- we could have preserved it."

"I think that this film expresses the collective Chamorro consciousness to reconnect to our precolonial roots," says the project's director, Alex Munoz, "to rediscover the values and culture that are beautiful, bountiful."

Munoz is part of a growing group of Pacific Islanders who, like Baltazar, have gone through film school to learn and hone their craft. He received his MFA from the University of Southern California's graduate school of Cinema and Television. Not only that, but Munoz has won several awards for his safe sex video targeting college students. The project was commissioned by the USC Medical Center. After receiving national recognition for his safe sex video, Munoz began directing commercials while still a student. Among his stand out spots are the "MTV Rock the Vote" spot he directed starring John Leguizamo, and a powerful anti-gang PSA spot targeting Latino youth. Born and raised in California, Alex grew up apart from his Chamorro heritage. He went to Guam last summer to direct the short project Prutehi Hao -- Protect Yourself where he started collaborating with Baltazar on the Hurao script.

"We hit it off creatively -- it is nice to work with someone with the same vision. We brainstormed for awhile. We were in sync with what and how to do it," says Aguon. "Alex and I talked about how it would be great to bring back an ancient chief."

Alex mentioned to Baltazar a picture that he had in his possession of what was purported to be Hurao, one of the last resistors of Spanish colonization.

"My cousin gave me a sketch of a fierce looking man," explained Munoz. "She said that my uncle, Joe Garrido, had been having visions of the warrior and he knew that it was Hurao."

The picture and the story excited Baltazar. "I had done a lot of research. I was consumed about the turbulent times during which Hurao lived. So when Alex brought it to me, it was as if I had done [the research] for a reason."

Joining this duo is Bernadette Provido Schumann -- quot;Bernie;" perhaps the least likely member of this creative team, Schumann comes to film from the realm of public health. With a BSN from the University of Guam in Business and Public Administration, she is currently the Sexually Transmitted Disease/HIV Prevention Program Supervisor of the Guam Department of Public Health and Social Services.

"One of my first contacts with film was a workshop in the late '90s provided by PIC." She went on to serve as the Guam site location coordinator with filmmaker Christine Choy on the documentary film, Out In Silence, a Fear of Disclosure Project targeting a Chamorro man's experience living with HIV. She recently co-produced an HIV Prevention Youth video by securing CDC Grant funding for Munoz to conduct filmmaking classes for Guam's adjudicated youth. The final production of the HIV Prevention Youth video premiered at a local Guam theater in August 2005.

Far from her health roots, she sees the Hurao project as important for the Chamorro people. "It is going to open up the consciousness. We never had history. We weren't taught Chamorro history in school and so we never were connected to our history. If we don't know our histories, then what are we going to be?"

The trio has this sentiment in common. The Chamorro people are returning to their history as a way to find their future. "People are struggling and they are starting to open up," says Bernie. "We want to be acknowledged as a significant people. That we are a 'people'. A 'people' that cannot be overlooked. We have our own history."

This movement or renaissance of culture is palpable to Munoz. "It's a force that you can feel as soon as you step off of the plane. It is like having layers of your skin peeled away so that you can feel everything with every nerve of your body and you feel alive," said Alex.

"The juxtaposition of the ancient culture and contemporary culture is compelling to us," says Baltazar. Creating a film that calls back to the elder Hurao, summoning him from the grave to see how his descendants are living their lives in modern day Guam, makes sense to these nascent filmmakers. He continues, "I know it sounds corny, but I feel spiritually in tune with the past and what it was about. Bringing [Hurao] back will hopefully act as a beacon to those who yearn to bring back the identity and culture."

For Alex, "Hurao will celebrate the survival instinct to preserve the culture." Because "authenticity is objective," Munoz feels that context is key and that the project as a product of "the collective consciousness can lead to a deeper understanding of the survival of a culture destroyed by colonization."

"There are so many who want to be identified as Chamorro," says Bernie. "There is a struggle to understand -- it can be difficult."

Baltazar adds, "I'm Chamorro, I'm proud and I'm not going to hide,"an attitude that he, Alex, and Bernie seem to share in common with Hurao himself.